Director Paul Feig is convinced that critics of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama are to blame for the dismal performance of his “Ghostbusters” reboot in 2016.
The Hollywood insider recently told SiriusXM listeners that politics was behind a collective rejection of his $144 million film, which starred Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones.
“Some really brilliant author or researcher or sociologist needs to write a book about 2016 and how intertwined [“Ghostbusters” were] with Hillary [Clinton] and the anti-Hillary movement,” he told “The Jess Cagle Show” on May 22.
Mr. Feig said asserted that negative feedback, which manifested in one of the most down-voted YouTube trailers of all time, could be traced to animosity over “women trying to be in power.”
“It was just this year where everyone went to a boiling point,” he said. “I don’t know if it was [having] an African-American president for eight years [that] teed them up or something, but they were just ready to explode. By the time, in 2014 or 2015, when I announced I was going to [direct] it, it started.”
Host Julia Cunningham made a similar point, saying that a “red flag” that Mr. Feig’s film would fail was the presidential election of Donald Trump.
“I thought, ’I should have seen this coming,’” she said. “There was so many people who loved it, but there was this weird vitriol towards it.”
The film’s final domestic haul topped off at $128 million. Its international take added roughly $101 million.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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